Bare Necessities Month — financial education

It can be difficult for employees to control their spending habits, in fact they may not realise that they have bad habits at all.

Improving bad habits is about knowing what’s essential and what isn’t and in fact, you can provide your employees with the bare necessities and help them to be better with their money.

What are the bare necessities?Well we think it’s important to have protection for when the worst happens, and to have some money set aside for big expenditures or an emergency. What your employees see as their bare necessities may well vary depending on their particular life stage, but you can provide a range of necessities including: Life Assurance, Medical Insurance, Income Protection, transport discounts, saving through pay schemes, and Pensions.

Providing these necessities for your employees often offers peace of mind and in some instances will provide them with discounted rates – meaning they can have what they need without breaking the bank. Where they make savings, they can put their extra cash towards other goals. However, employees won’t make the most of the benefits you offer if they don’t understand how important they are or how they work. And they may think they can’t afford to invest in these benefits if they don’t know how to manage their money.

Be clear on the benefits you provideIf you educate your employees on the benefits you provide, and give them the tools and knowledge they need to be better with money, they can free up savings to use on essential benefits and know how those benefits relate to their lives outside of work. If you support your employees by offering great benefits which they make great use of, you are more likely to benefit from increased retention, increased engagement, attracting new staff, decreased absence, decreased stress and more productive and happy employees.

For more information, speak to your usual Jelf consultant or visit our website. For the full original article and other similar posts please visit the Jelf Group blog.